The Royal Navy could charter civilian ships to help clear Iranian mines in the Strait of Hormuz.
Britain is leading an international coalition drawing up options to reopen the narrow shipping lane. Chartered vessels would act as minehunting “motherships”, deploying drones from their decks to seek out and destroy hidden underwater explosives across the Gulf. Naval chiefs are also considering converting some of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary’s four Bay-class landing ships into potential minehunters.
And I was joking about them sending Boaty McBoatyFace.
Like Dunkirk.
No not like Dunkirk at all.
It is in the 'using civilian floating assets' sense. Obviously there are some big differences of detail. This is 2026 and Iran war and clearing the Straits of Hormuz. Dunkirk was an episode in WW2. But as fanciful comparisons between Middle East conflicts and WW2 go, I don't think it's the worst.
It’s nothing like.
It’s closer to using civilian ships as blockships or piers - they will be used a flat floating things, basically.
Not moving around or carrying troops.
I'm not going to die on this hill but there is, undeniably, a ghost of an echo of Dunkirk.
@DPJHodges OK, this is getting worse. The idea McSweeney just rang up the cops and reported the theft like an ordinary member of the public is nuts. It was a highly sensitive mobile. Why didn’t he report it to No.10 security, so they could ensure a proper investigation.
I will be fascinated to know how it was stolen?
Yes officer I was having a coffee by myself, sitting out front at curbside table on a very busy street in London. I needed to go for toilet where I was otherwise engaged for over half an hour, dodgy curry the previous evening, as i left the bathroom I bumped into a friend who I hadn't seen for a while and insisted on chatting for a good 15-20 minutes, but the curry got the better of me and I had to return to the bathroom for another half an hour, upon my return, I was shocked to find my phone had been stolen.
Oh God, not another story involving Starmer and curry.
NEW: The Met Police will reopen its investigation into the theft of Morgan McSweeney’s phone after admitting it logged the wrong address
Officers reviewed CCTV from Belgrave Street in Tower Hamlets, not Belgrave Road in Pimlico, despite the phone containing the PM's number
The Met Police said: "On Monday, 20 October police received a report from a man in his 40s alleging that his phone had been snatched.
"The incident was recorded as having taken place in Belgrave Street, E1.
"A review of the allegation, including a consideration of whether there was available CCTV, did not identify any realistic lines of enquiry. The investigation was subsequently closed.
"In the course of responding to a recent media enquiry, we became aware that the address was entered incorrectly at the time of the initial call and should instead have been recorded as Belgrave Road, Pimlico.
"Having identified this error, the report will be amended and the assessment of whether there is available evidence revisited"
The theft of McSweeney's phone means his WhatsApp messages and texts to Peter Mandelson cannot be recovered
It is understood the phone was Government-issued
I believe all the missing government phones from the last 10 years are in Lou Haigh's bedside drawer.
In 20 years time she'll be posting photos of pieces from her collection on PB - "if you look on the underside of this one, it has a wine splash where Carrie threw the glass at him, I now use it to weight down my loofah, but just feel the NOOM"
Now it looks as though the "Red" bloc of parties in Denmark has the edge 83-78 but the Moderates still have the balance with 14.
The Liberal Alliance leader, Alex Vanopslagh, is already talking about the offer the "Blue" bloc can make to Lars Lokke Rasmussen, the Moderates leader, to persuade him to support a centre-right Government.
I suspect Mette Frederiksen, the Prime Minister and Social Democrat leader, is probably thinking something similar but how to keep Rasmussen onside.
IIRC keeping a Rasmussen on side has been very important in modern Danish politics given the trio of PMs since the 90s.
@DPJHodges OK, this is getting worse. The idea McSweeney just rang up the cops and reported the theft like an ordinary member of the public is nuts. It was a highly sensitive mobile. Why didn’t he report it to No.10 security, so they could ensure a proper investigation.
I will be fascinated to know how it was stolen?
Yes officer I was having a coffee by myself, sitting out front at curbside table on a very busy street in London. I needed to go for toilet where I was otherwise engaged for over half an hour, dodgy curry the previous evening, as i left the bathroom I bumped into a friend who I hadn't seen for a while and insisted on chatting for a good 15-20 minutes, but the curry got the better of me and I had to return to the bathroom for another half an hour, upon my return, I was shocked to find my phone had been stolen.
Oh God, not another story involving Starmer and curry.
I've bought fancy cooking knives that are so sharp I cut myself on first usage, ten minutes ago, and now I'm scared of them
The whole point of high end knives is not only better cutting experience but should reduce chance of accident because you shouldn't be having to apply much force to cut things.
There is a dangerous period when you adjust from one to the other.
Had my wife's parents over for dinner last week (roast chicken, potato gratin, etc, was delicious, thanks for asking) and my father-in-law sharpened our knives for us. First couple of days I was getting them stuck in the wooden chopping board because I was pressing too hard.
Recommendation for knife sharpener for the unskilled:
Trump says Iran agreed to give up nuclear weapons in peace talks - and says mullahs gave the US 'a very big present, worth a tremendous amount of money'
Have Iran bunged him a solid gold throne or something?
Or Trump is bullshitting?
You would have to be incredibly stupid to believe anything that comes out of Trump's mouth. He's being proved a liar on a daily daily basi. Sad thing is most of the MAGAs are too thick to see it and unfortunately that is what counts most and why I don't think we can ever trust the US again even after Trump has gone.
Trump says Iran agreed to give up nuclear weapons in peace talks - and says mullahs gave the US 'a very big present, worth a tremendous amount of money'
Have Iran bunged him a solid gold throne or something?
Or Trump is bullshitting?
You would have to be incredibly stupid to believe anything that comes out of Trump's mouth. He's being proved a liar on a daily daily basi. Sad thing is most of the MAGAs are too thick to see it and unfortunately that is what counts most and why I don't think we can ever trust the US again even after Trump has gone.
Trump says Iran agreed to give up nuclear weapons in peace talks - and says mullahs gave the US 'a very big present, worth a tremendous amount of money'
Have Iran bunged him a solid gold throne or something?
Or Trump is bullshitting?
You would have to be incredibly stupid to believe anything that comes out of Trump's mouth. He's being proved a liar on a daily daily basi. Sad thing is most of the MAGAs are too thick to see it and unfortunately that is what counts most and why I don't think we can ever trust the US again even after Trump has gone.
£225m won't get you anywhere trying to train an LLM...He does realise that OpenAI etc are spending 10s of billions every year training these things and the going starting rate for people with the skills to train them is £1-2 million a year in salary. And the likes of Google Deepmind team on this are massive now.
If you are serious about having a UK LLM, you better starting putting many many billions aside every year.
Rob Key gave a masterclass in waffle and failing upwards.
The fact he has hoodwinked apparently the entirety of the leadership of English cricket into not sacking him will be one for the ages.
A little while back wasn't there an Australian con man who arrived by helicopter at Lords or the Oval with a suitcase of banknotes to arrange some kind of deal with English cricket?
Allen Stanford, he was American based out of the Caribbean. In the slammer for the rest of his life for running a Ponzi scheme.
£225m won't get you anywhere trying to train an LLM...He does realise that OpenAI etc are spending 10s of billions every year training these things and the going starting rate for people with the skills to train them is £1-2 million a year in salary. And the likes of Google Deepmind team on this are massive now.
If you are serious about having a UK LLM, you better starting putting many many billions aside every year.
DeepSeek costs $6 million.
Wasn't that more about the final training of the model, not the total cost? Which was much higher, though still peanuts compared the OpenAI costs?
Now it looks as though the "Red" bloc of parties in Denmark has the edge 83-78 but the Moderates still have the balance with 14.
The Liberal Alliance leader, Alex Vanopslagh, is already talking about the offer the "Blue" bloc can make to Lars Lokke Rasmussen, the Moderates leader, to persuade him to support a centre-right Government.
I suspect Mette Frederiksen, the Prime Minister and Social Democrat leader, is probably thinking something similar but how to keep Rasmussen onside.
84-77 now, with the centrist Moderates holding the balance with 14 as you say. There are also 4 seats for Greenland and the Faeroes which will probably split 2-2. All the centre-left governing parties lost ground: further left- and right-wing parties had a good election. But it doesn't look as though there will be a major shift.
Trump says Iran agreed to give up nuclear weapons in peace talks - and says mullahs gave the US 'a very big present, worth a tremendous amount of money'
Have Iran bunged him a solid gold throne or something?
Or Trump is bullshitting?
You would have to be incredibly stupid to believe anything that comes out of Trump's mouth. He's being proved a liar on a daily daily basi. Sad thing is most of the MAGAs are too thick to see it and unfortunately that is what counts most and why I don't think we can ever trust the US again even after Trump has gone.
Trump's options (capitulate and pretend it's a win, or escalate and hope for the best) aren't great ones.
The latest I see in the FT is Iran is looking to permit more ships to pass, so long as they pay a tax / protection money to Iran. And pay in Yuan.
It's quite a clever move if it results in shipping increasing. Would defacto make them owners of the Strait. And gives them the ability to exert influence over GCC as a result.
Now it looks as though the "Red" bloc of parties in Denmark has the edge 83-78 but the Moderates still have the balance with 14.
The Liberal Alliance leader, Alex Vanopslagh, is already talking about the offer the "Blue" bloc can make to Lars Lokke Rasmussen, the Moderates leader, to persuade him to support a centre-right Government.
I suspect Mette Frederiksen, the Prime Minister and Social Democrat leader, is probably thinking something similar but how to keep Rasmussen onside.
84-77 now, with the centrist Moderates holding the balance with 14 as you say. There are also 4 seats for Greenland and the Faeroes which will probably split 2-2. All the centre-left governing parties lost ground: further left- and right-wing parties had a good election. But it doesn't look as though there will be a major shift.
Little change from the last general election as you say but the biggest gainers on seats and votes at the moment look like the rightwing populist and anti immigration Danish Peoples' Party. The governing Social Democrats facing their worst result for a century even if they scrape back in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Danish_general_election
Now it looks as though the "Red" bloc of parties in Denmark has the edge 83-78 but the Moderates still have the balance with 14.
The Liberal Alliance leader, Alex Vanopslagh, is already talking about the offer the "Blue" bloc can make to Lars Lokke Rasmussen, the Moderates leader, to persuade him to support a centre-right Government.
I suspect Mette Frederiksen, the Prime Minister and Social Democrat leader, is probably thinking something similar but how to keep Rasmussen onside.
84-77 now, with the centrist Moderates holding the balance with 14 as you say. There are also 4 seats for Greenland and the Faeroes which will probably split 2-2. All the centre-left governing parties lost ground: further left- and right-wing parties had a good election. But it doesn't look as though there will be a major shift.
All three parties in the coalition lost ground and that includes Venstre.
Dansk Folkeparti have done very well but the likes of Liberal Alliance and Socialistiske Folkeparti have also advanced.
It's not quite as bad as it looked earlier when Socialdemokraterne were below 20% in the exit poll and when Venstre was behind Liberal Alliance.
Many questions - could another party join the current governing coalition and keep Frederiksen in office or will we see a reversion to more traditional Red-Blue politics? Lars Lokke Rasmussen seems to hold the answers and I've no notion which way he will jump.
Looks like the Danish exit poll was pretty good in terms of the blocs, although they underestimated the Social Democrats as an individual party. 22% instead of 19%.
WarMonitor🇺🇦🇬🇧 @WarMonitor3 · 33m US officials say the Iranian government is in chaos and it is struggling to communicate even within itself, this makes diplomacy hard as it is unclear who is making the decisions-AXIOS
@DPJHodges OK, this is getting worse. The idea McSweeney just rang up the cops and reported the theft like an ordinary member of the public is nuts. It was a highly sensitive mobile. Why didn’t he report it to No.10 security, so they could ensure a proper investigation.
Boris-esque, with the defenders and accusers roles reversed
£225m won't get you anywhere trying to train an LLM...He does realise that OpenAI etc are spending 10s of billions every year training these things and the going starting rate for people with the skills to train them is £1-2 million a year in salary. And the likes of Google Deepmind team on this are massive now.
If you are serious about having a UK LLM, you better starting putting many many billions aside every year.
No - you can train an LLM for much less than that. OpenAI spend a ton but you don't have to.
And for specific applications- like drug discovery or extreme weather - an LLM probably isnt the right approach.
You want high quality data and something tailored to that. It wasnt an LLM that won the Nobel prize for chemistry.
Trump says Iran agreed to give up nuclear weapons in peace talks - and says mullahs gave the US 'a very big present, worth a tremendous amount of money'
Trump says Iran agreed to give up nuclear weapons in peace talks - and says mullahs gave the US 'a very big present, worth a tremendous amount of money'
Have Iran bunged him a solid gold throne or something?
Or Trump is bullshitting?
You would have to be incredibly stupid to believe anything that comes out of Trump's mouth. He's being proved a liar on a daily daily basi. Sad thing is most of the MAGAs are too thick to see it and unfortunately that is what counts most and why I don't think we can ever trust the US again even after Trump has gone.
Trump's options (capitulate and pretend it's a win, or escalate and hope for the best) aren't great ones.
The latest I see in the FT is Iran is looking to permit more ships to pass, so long as they pay a tax / protection money to Iran. And pay in Yuan.
It's quite a clever move if it results in shipping increasing. Would defacto make them owners of the Strait. And gives them the ability to exert influence over GCC as a result.
If he plays his cards right Trump can maybe extricate himself with something close to the Obama deal.
£225m won't get you anywhere trying to train an LLM...He does realise that OpenAI etc are spending 10s of billions every year training these things and the going starting rate for people with the skills to train them is £1-2 million a year in salary. And the likes of Google Deepmind team on this are massive now.
If you are serious about having a UK LLM, you better starting putting many many billions aside every year.
Training costs are dictated by the amount of data the model trains on. For a general model like ChatGPT or Gemini that's basically everything, but if you're creating a model for specific scientific purposes the training can be orders of magnitude cheaper.
There are (rich) people training special purpose models using consumer grade hardware in their bedrooms.
Danny (Dennis) Citrinowicz ,داني سيترينوفيتش @citrinowicz
If these are indeed the [15] core points, they only underscore a deeper problem: Washington still doesn’t understand Iran or where it is heading.
Trump now faces three choices: accept Iran’s terms, walk away from negotiations, or settle for an empty framework that allows him to declare the war over without resolving anything.
These are terms Iran would not have accepted before the war, and certainly not after it. A regime that feels it has withstood pressure and is far less likely to compromise.
Now it looks as though the "Red" bloc of parties in Denmark has the edge 83-78 but the Moderates still have the balance with 14.
The Liberal Alliance leader, Alex Vanopslagh, is already talking about the offer the "Blue" bloc can make to Lars Lokke Rasmussen, the Moderates leader, to persuade him to support a centre-right Government.
I suspect Mette Frederiksen, the Prime Minister and Social Democrat leader, is probably thinking something similar but how to keep Rasmussen onside.
84-77 now, with the centrist Moderates holding the balance with 14 as you say. There are also 4 seats for Greenland and the Faeroes which will probably split 2-2. All the centre-left governing parties lost ground: further left- and right-wing parties had a good election. But it doesn't look as though there will be a major shift.
All three parties in the coalition lost ground and that includes Venstre.
Dansk Folkeparti have done very well but the likes of Liberal Alliance and Socialistiske Folkeparti have also advanced.
It's not quite as bad as it looked earlier when Socialdemokraterne were below 20% in the exit poll and when Venstre was behind Liberal Alliance.
Many questions - could another party join the current governing coalition and keep Frederiksen in office or will we see a reversion to more traditional Red-Blue politics? Lars Lokke Rasmussen seems to hold the answers and I've no notion which way he will jump.
What you describe, wasn’t that exactly the tagline ahead of season 2 episode 7?
When promulgated, it would mark a sweeping overhaul of the nation's prosecution system. Under the new laws, the prosecution office will be shut down in October, 78 years after its establishment in 1948, and two new agencies will exercise indictment and investigate roles, respectively.
The bills on establishing the so-called serious crimes investigation agency and the indictment agency, pushed by the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK), were passed at the National Assembly last week in a plenary session boycotted by the main opposition People Power Party (PPP)..
..The government has been seeking to separate the prosecution service's authority over both indictment and investigation amid longstanding criticism that the prosecution has abused its exclusive powers by carrying out politically motivated investigations.
The DPK has argued that the reform is needed to curb potential political abuse of prosecutorial power, while the PPP has warned it could weaken checks on investigators and increase the risk of political influence.
Looks like the Danish exit poll was pretty good in terms of the blocs, although they underestimated the Social Democrats as an individual party. 22% instead of 19%.
All the polls and analysis Stodge has been posting this week have been pretty accurate to this exact result.
Which is why I came to feel it would be a Borgen conclusion. 🙋♀️
@DPJHodges OK, this is getting worse. The idea McSweeney just rang up the cops and reported the theft like an ordinary member of the public is nuts. It was a highly sensitive mobile. Why didn’t he report it to No.10 security, so they could ensure a proper investigation.
Boris-esque, with the defenders and accusers roles reversed
Kaleds and Thals wipe each other out. Sontarans and Cybermen take their places.
WarMonitor🇺🇦🇬🇧 @WarMonitor3 · 33m US officials say the Iranian government is in chaos and it is struggling to communicate even within itself, this makes diplomacy hard as it is unclear who is making the decisions-AXIOS
WarMonitor🇺🇦🇬🇧 @WarMonitor3 · 33m US officials say the Iranian government is in chaos and it is struggling to communicate even within itself, this makes diplomacy hard as it is unclear who is making the decisions-AXIOS
WarMonitor🇺🇦🇬🇧 @WarMonitor3 · 33m US officials say the Iranian government is in chaos and it is struggling to communicate even within itself, this makes diplomacy hard as it is unclear who is making the decisions-AXIOS
Erm, that's by design by the Iranian hard line leaders.
The power is diffused across the IRCG and the theocracy.
The hydra
The threat of being assassinated if you use your phone might also have something to do with it.
Beat me to it. Who would have thought it would be tough to talk to the leaders of Iran when you’ve killed one, most of their family and many of the other plausible candidates. 4D chess with these geniuses.
£225m won't get you anywhere trying to train an LLM...He does realise that OpenAI etc are spending 10s of billions every year training these things and the going starting rate for people with the skills to train them is £1-2 million a year in salary. And the likes of Google Deepmind team on this are massive now.
If you are serious about having a UK LLM, you better starting putting many many billions aside every year.
DeepSeek costs $6 million.
If you believe that you will believe anything, see SuperMicro System scandal.
Nobodys who works with training LLMs think they spent $6 million, or $60 million for thst matter, nor that they trained it on shitty GPUs. Also worth noting they used stolen Claude weights and api attacks on OpenAI.
That all been said, they did and continue to make somr interesting discoveries. But the whole its a handful of smart quant people is just a cover story.
XAI have done really well with a pretty small team and......250,000 GPUs....
£225m won't get you anywhere trying to train an LLM...He does realise that OpenAI etc are spending 10s of billions every year training these things and the going starting rate for people with the skills to train them is £1-2 million a year in salary. And the likes of Google Deepmind team on this are massive now.
If you are serious about having a UK LLM, you better starting putting many many billions aside every year.
Training costs are dictated by the amount of data the model trains on. For a general model like ChatGPT or Gemini that's basically everything, but if you're creating a model for specific scientific purposes the training can be orders of magnitude cheaper.
There are (rich) people training special purpose models using consumer grade hardware in their bedrooms.
I wouldnt categorise those as LLMs, rather foundation models. Even then, I have been told about a project at deepmind along these lines and how compute they spent every day on it, lets just say £200m wont go as far as you think.
And ultimately if you want to get inti the foundatiom model game you will be competing againsr the big boys. Meta is doing loads of work with vision and 3d foundation models and again the resources they used are big time. Bytedance and Tencent also throwing huge money at this.
It really annoys me with these scandals we arent trusted to see what the offensive joke was to judge for ourselves. It is trivial to put it behind a part of behind a box that you actively have to click to reveal it with a warning saying potentially offensive material we dont condone.
£225m won't get you anywhere trying to train an LLM...He does realise that OpenAI etc are spending 10s of billions every year training these things and the going starting rate for people with the skills to train them is £1-2 million a year in salary. And the likes of Google Deepmind team on this are massive now.
If you are serious about having a UK LLM, you better starting putting many many billions aside every year.
DeepSeek costs $6 million.
If you believe that you will believe anything, see SuperMicro System scandal.
Nobodys who works with training LLMs think they spent $6 million, or $60 million for thst matter, nor that they trained it on shitty GPUs. Also worth noting they used stolen Claude weights and api attacks on OpenAI.
That all been said, they did and continue to make somr interesting discoveries. But the whole its a handful of smart quant people is just a cover story.
XAI have done really well with a pretty small team and......250,000 GPUs....
Also, essentially none of that team is there any more. When it was sold to SpaceX, almost all the Founders walked.
It really annoys me with these scandals we arent trusted to see what the offensive joke was to judge for ourselves. It is trivial to put it behind a part of behind a box that you actively have to click to reveal it with a warning saying potentially offensive material we dont condone.
I listen to Radio 4 Extra a lot and before almost every programme we have to be told that the language on the programme may be outdated.
This is from a radio station mostly dedicated to broadcasting vintage shows.
The Tories in May are set to be the Japanese during the Battle of Iwo Jima.
I expect the Tories to gain Westminster and Barnet and hold Kensington and Chelsea in May.
Kemi is proving very popular with posh wealthy people, especially posh rich West Londoners and Jews, it is now safe for you to say you are a Tory at one of your posh candlelit dinners and soirees.
However unfortunately for her that is a rather niche market, with rightwingers in most of the rest of the UK preferring Farage to her and leftwingers preferring Labour and the Greens and centrists preferring Labour and the LDs and Scottish and Welsh nats voting SNP and Plaid
I predicted a Plaid Green coalition some time ago and expect that both Scotland and Wales could have independence seeking governments
Labour 13 conservatives 1 lib dems 0 is quite a prediction but not impossible
Plaid have not included seeking independence in their manifesto and have ruled out even pushing the issue in their first term, which is the main reason they are ahead.
The SNP are already in power in Scotland but of course the UK government will refuse indyref2 whatever happens in May
The main reason Plaid are ahead is the utter contempt for labour's decades in power
The point is that if both Scotland and Wales elect independence parties then there is little prospect of any respect for Westminster and tensions between the nations will be the result
There is already no respect and considerable tension - and that is just between Welsh Labour and UK Labour!
Britain is now in accelerated decline - gradual for decades, now at risk of sudden collapse.
My stark verdict: unchecked, UK heading for relative poverty - a deindustrialised, sectarian, indebted island with first-rate pretensions & third-rate power.
I thought the Right viewed the 'relative poverty' metric as a load of cobblers.
Relative poverty is more about equality than measuring how many people are essentially destitute. It feels like shifting the goalposts. If poverty was about not being able to heat your home or choose heat or eat, relative measures can be affected by perverse incentives.
Exactly. So why worry about the UK becoming 'relatively' impoverished?
Because, as @williamglenn notes, it means Britain looks relatively impoverished, more and more, compared to other countries. For the main reason that we ARE
I travel the globe, in case you haven't noticed, and I see this all the time. Britain looking more and more clapped out in comparison to others
HOWEVER, and to be fair, this is true of many western European nations, with exceptions like Denmark, Norway, Switzerland - they look increasingly bedraggled compared to the USA, East Asia, Australia, etc
Much of it is immigration of the most astonishingly stupid variety. It's hard for a country to look rich when you've got illiterate Afghans or Somalians aimlessly wandering the streets with nothing to do because there is literally nothing for them to do - even if they want to work (as of course very many do) they don't have the skills. So they become welfare bums, or just itinerants
I'm always astonished at how many people I see wondering around town centres "not working" on a regular workday, on the rare occasions I'm off.
I usually have the centrists tell me they are "shift workers".
Britain is now in accelerated decline - gradual for decades, now at risk of sudden collapse.
My stark verdict: unchecked, UK heading for relative poverty - a deindustrialised, sectarian, indebted island with first-rate pretensions & third-rate power.
Wow! And it was all going so well until the Conservatives left office 20 months ago.
The Tories are more to blame for our current state than Labour. They've had more time in office, these last three decades, and they are meant to be the smart capitalists who make amends for mad socialism. I hope the Conservatives DIE
Osborne was pure politics. He simply viewed elections as a game to maximise votes to get in. The only thing I think he genuinely seemed to believe in was lowering Corporation Tax, and avoiding urban social embarrassment for being a Conservative.
Cameron should have challenged him on it. But I think he was more interested in being chairman of the board, rather than CEO.
Comments
In 20 years time she'll be posting photos of pieces from her collection on PB - "if you look on the underside of this one, it has a wine splash where Carrie threw the glass at him, I now use it to weight down my loofah, but just feel the NOOM"
The Kobeissi Letter
@KobeissiLetter
IRAN ON POTENTIAL US GROUND INVASION:
"For years, we have been awaiting the Americans' entry. We have just one message for the American soldiers: Come closer."
https://x.com/KobeissiLetter/status/2036554648501563899
Martin Clunes clearly needs a new agent.
The latest I see in the FT is Iran is looking to permit more ships to pass, so long as they pay a tax / protection money to Iran. And pay in Yuan.
It's quite a clever move if it results in shipping increasing. Would defacto make them owners of the Strait. And gives them the ability to exert influence over GCC as a result.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Danish_general_election
Dansk Folkeparti have done very well but the likes of Liberal Alliance and Socialistiske Folkeparti have also advanced.
It's not quite as bad as it looked earlier when Socialdemokraterne were below 20% in the exit poll and when Venstre was behind Liberal Alliance.
Many questions - could another party join the current governing coalition and keep Frederiksen in office or will we see a reversion to more traditional Red-Blue politics? Lars Lokke Rasmussen seems to hold the answers and I've no notion which way he will jump.
Probably a NFT of a golden Trump idol.
WarMonitor🇺🇦🇬🇧
@WarMonitor3
·
33m
US officials say the Iranian government is in chaos and it is struggling to communicate even within itself, this makes diplomacy hard as it is unclear who is making the decisions-AXIOS
https://x.com/WarMonitor3/status/2036559505094320563
Erm, that's by design by the Iranian hard line leaders.
The power is diffused across the IRCG and the theocracy.
The hydra
OpenAI spend a ton but you don't have to.
And for specific applications- like drug discovery or extreme weather - an LLM probably isnt the right approach.
You want high quality data and something tailored to that. It wasnt an LLM that won the Nobel prize for chemistry.
There are (rich) people training special purpose models using consumer grade hardware in their bedrooms.
Danny (Dennis) Citrinowicz ,داني سيترينوفيتش
@citrinowicz
If these are indeed the [15] core points, they only underscore a deeper problem: Washington still doesn’t understand Iran or where it is heading.
Trump now faces three choices: accept Iran’s terms, walk away from negotiations, or settle for an empty framework that allows him to declare the war over without resolving anything.
These are terms Iran would not have accepted before the war, and certainly not after it. A regime that feels it has withstood pressure and is far less likely to compromise.
https://x.com/citrinowicz/status/2036572424972456344
Script writers will be horrified at this news.
Prosecution reform bills approved at Cabinet in significant overhaul
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/southkorea/politics/20260324/prosecution-reform-bills-approved-at-cabinet-in-significant-overhaul
The Cabinet on Tuesday approved two prosecution reform bills that would dismantle the current prosecution service later this year to separate its exclusive power to both initiate criminal probes and indict suspects.
When promulgated, it would mark a sweeping overhaul of the nation's prosecution system. Under the new laws, the prosecution office will be shut down in October, 78 years after its establishment in 1948, and two new agencies will exercise indictment and investigate roles, respectively.
The bills on establishing the so-called serious crimes investigation agency and the indictment agency, pushed by the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK), were passed at the National Assembly last week in a plenary session boycotted by the main opposition People Power Party (PPP)..
..The government has been seeking to separate the prosecution service's authority over both indictment and investigation amid longstanding criticism that the prosecution has abused its exclusive powers by carrying out politically motivated investigations.
The DPK has argued that the reform is needed to curb potential political abuse of prosecutorial power, while the PPP has warned it could weaken checks on investigators and increase the risk of political influence.
Which is why I came to feel it would be a Borgen conclusion. 🙋♀️
@WarMonitor3
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45m
The US 82nd airborne division has just received a prepare to deploy order-FOX
Nobodys who works with training LLMs think they spent $6 million, or $60 million for thst matter, nor that they trained it on shitty GPUs. Also worth noting they used stolen Claude weights and api attacks on OpenAI.
That all been said, they did and continue to make somr interesting discoveries. But the whole its a handful of smart quant people is just a cover story.
XAI have done really well with a pretty small team and......250,000 GPUs....
And ultimately if you want to get inti the foundatiom model game you will be competing againsr the big boys. Meta is doing loads of work with vision and 3d foundation models and again the resources they used are big time. Bytedance and Tencent also throwing huge money at this.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly64g15j3wo
It really annoys me with these scandals we arent trusted to see what the offensive joke was to judge for ourselves. It is trivial to put it behind a part of behind a box that you actively have to click to reveal it with a warning saying potentially offensive material we dont condone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ea-bbUWA7Os
This is from a radio station mostly dedicated to broadcasting vintage shows.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIxgHk-3ZVA
- District includes Mar-a-Lago
- Seat won by Republican by 19% in 2024
- Trump won District by 11% in 2024 Presidential
Trump voted by Mail - whilst trying to dramatically restrict Mail-in voting.
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/03/24/politics/florida-democrats-state-district-mar-a-lago-special-election
- Seat won by Republican by 10% in 2022
- Trump won District by 7% in 2024 Presidential
https://floridaphoenix.com/2026/03/24/florida-democrats-flip-two-seats-in-special-legislative-elections/
I usually have the centrists tell me they are "shift workers".
They are not shift workers.
Cameron should have challenged him on it. But I think he was more interested in being chairman of the board, rather than CEO.